The discovery is the closest black hole ever observed and suggests these exotic objects are more common than previously thought.
Imagine the Sun was orbiting a black hole, perhaps spiraling into it. The idea that an ordinary star like our Sun could fall into such a trap It sounds like the plot from a science fiction movie. Indeed, of the 20 or so black holes known to astronomers none threaten a sun-like star.
But astronomers have long thought there could be a more insidious population of black hole binary systems that are not glowing brightly and so remain hidden. If so, then the latest generation of orbiting observatories might be able to spot them. As the observatory moves around the Sun, it measures the change in position of nearby stars against the more distant background of stars. This parallax method then reveals the distance of the nearer stars.
El-Badry and co set out to characterize the nature of this companion. Using a detailed series of further observations from the ground, the team say the companion is not visible at any wavelengths even though its Sun-like companion orbits it every 186 days. Given this motion, the companion must have a mass about ten times that of the Sun.
That is an interesting discovery that is set to rewrite our understanding of black holes and their ubiquity. Until now, the nearest black hole to Earth was 3300 light years away. Gaia BH1 is less than a third of that distance.
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